This Sunday, the world turns green for St Patrick’s Day and in honour of this wonderful celebration, we’ve pulled together some trends to present a picture of the Irish app market in 2019.

Android vs iOS market share

While it certainly feels like you see iPhones everywhere in Ireland, Apple actually enjoys a much smaller slice of the market than Android. Our data shows that last year, the top 10 apps accounted for approximately 8.2 million downloads on Android devices.

Ireland: Overall Downloads 2018 (Android devices)

iOS on the other hand is trailing pretty far behind the leading mobile operating system, with the country’s top 10 apps fetching 3.1 million downloads on all Apple devices in 2018.

Ireland: Overall Downloads 2018 (iOS devices)

Rather fittingly, the green icon of WhatsApp Messenger tops the charts for total downloads in both major stores.

Games

In 2018, Helix Jump was by far the most downloaded game in Ireland, generating 776k downloads. Interestingly, it seems Irish consumers wield their purse-strings pretty tight; throughout the entire year, Helix Jump managed to squeeze only $2.2k from in-app purchases (in comparison, Brits splurged $83k). In fact, the average revenue per daily active user struggled to get above $0.00001 per day for the closing months of the year.

However, even the thrifty Irish can’t resist the temptation that is Candy Crush Saga which continues to be the country’s highest grossing app. In 2018, the iconic game pulled in $1.6m from 154k downloads on both iOS and Android.

Many also seemed to have given up chasing rainbows and turned to mobile for their search for that elusive pot of gold, as downloads for Coin Master spiked this month, making it the 4th fastest growing app in the country on iOS over the last 30 days. Its developer, Moon Active have built up their own stash in the process - earning the 11th highest revenue of all game developers in this time frame and seeing 780% growth in downloads!

Shopping

When it comes to snagging some great deals, it appears that shopping app Wish is the only platform worthy of Irish attention. The app has gained a cult-like following in the Guinness-exporting country, amassing 1.3 million downloads in 2018. This is incredibly impressive when you consider that that the country’s total population stands at approximately 4.8 million, and that staple app WhatsApp amassed just under 2.2 million downloads during the same time.

Russia-based Joom is in second place but its figures pale in comparison with 423.1k downloads for the year.

Surprisingly, the world’s most valuable company, Amazon, doesn’t have much sway over the Irish. With 410.k downloads, the global e-commerce giant ranks in third place. It remains to be seen whether the luck of the Irish will be upon Amazon in 2019.

Food & Drink

As is tradition, several pints of Guinness are sure to be consumed over the weekend, and facilitating this will be the Wetherspoon app which has seen a steady growth in downloads over the last year to become a top 10 mainstay in this category.

Meanwhile Uber Eats will take large responsibility for providing Apple users with their choice of food, having seen a 503% growth in downloads since the start of the year in their bid to dominate the Irish market. They look to replace previous favourite Just Eat at the top of the charts, who have seen 20% negative growth over the same time period.

However, it seems Android users are slightly more reluctant to adopt Uber’s delivery app. Although Just Eat has similarly seen 20.5% negative growth, Uber Eats has only seen a 24.8% growth in downloads.

Travel

For those looking to travel to Ireland for an authentic Paddy’s day experience, Ryanair and Aer Lingus are the most popular travel apps, with a market share of 5.9% and 5.4% respectively.

Whilst you’re there, it’s worth downloading mytaxi, which holds the largest share of downloads in the cab industry, especially amongst Android users. However if you just can’t stand the idea of a weekend without Uber, you can take comfort from the fact that they still seem to dominate daily active use.

And for somewhere to rest your head, Airbnb could be your best bet, amassing 56.9K downloads last year. Or search for hotels on Booking.com, another popular choice amongst the Irish, with 116.5K.